TPP ministerial continues push for 2013 finish, but questions linger

In this May 2, 2013 file photo, Michael Froman, watches as President Barack Obama speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington where he announced he would nominate Froman as the next US Trade Representative. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

On Thursday ministers from most — if not all – of the Trans-Pacific Partnership members will get together for a series of meetings over two days in Brunei that they’re hoping will propel the 12-country trade negotiations towards a 2013 conclusion.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical.

But the fact that negotiating teams will also be in Brunei as of Thursday — starting the nineteenth round of talks — has contributed to a sense of willful urgency.

Most of this, of course, is being driven by the Americans.

Ever since they more or less appropriated the then-expanding P4 Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement in 2009 — which had grown from Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore to include Australia, Peru, and Vietnam — there’s been no doubt as to who has been calling the shots.

Before Canada and others could even join the TPP, it was American approval they needed.

But for something that was supposedly the Obama administration’s single most important trade initiative — part of the so-called “Asia pivot” — they really didn’t give the impression it was that much of a priority in the president’s first term.

That all changed, however, when Michael Froman took over as the US trade representative in late June.

Most recently, speaking in Japan on Monday, he told the newest TPP member they would have to do more to open up their automotive and insurance markets in the negotiations — priming them for what should be some intense horse-trading later in the week.

Other members, however, might have something to say about stones and glass houses.

The Australians didn’t end up getting the American market access they would’ve liked for their sugar when their free trade agreement with the U.S. came into force in 2005, and they don’t intend on letting the formidable U.S. sugar lobby shut them out again.

Nor are the Vietnamese happy about American insistence on what’s known as a yarn-forward rule, which limits their opportunities to export their shoes and clothes by requiring that yarn and fabric production, along with cutting and sewing, take place within TPP members in order for final products to get tariff-free access.

Since China is a significant source of Vietnamese yarns and fabrics, removing the tariff for Vietnamese finished products while including a yarn-forward rule would essentially leave them where they are.

While there are plenty of other examples of tricky issues that still need to be resolved in the 29-chapter trade agreement — such as those that deal with pharmaceutical intellectual property and agriculture (a few of Canada’s sensitivities) — the Chinese link is an important one.

The Obama administration has, publicly at least, always left the door open to Chinese participation in the TPP.

But over at the Financial Post last May, David Pilling put on paper what a lot people had already concluded in their private conversations: the TPP is an “anybody but China club” and an American geopolitical power play.